Abstract

A common complaint from political scientists involved in the study of religion is that religious issues have been largely overlooked by the discipline. This paper considers to what extent this has been the case through a content analysis of leading political science and sociology journals from 2000 to 2010. The results show that political science publications involving religion have been significantly fewer than those engaging with subjects typically regarded as being more central to the discipline, and markedly less numerous than religious publications in leading sociology periodicals. Where political science publications haveengaged with religious issues, they have also focused on a limited number of subject areas and been concentrated in specific disciplinary sub-fields. The proportion of papers engaging with religion has shown no real increase since the turn of the century. These findings underpin calls for political scientists to take religious issues more seriously.